I was in Melbourne in February 2022 when this property first came onto the market. COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions prevented ordinary travel between New Zealand and Australia so I couldn’t get to see the place. One of my sisters used to work for a man, whose mother used to nurse with a woman, whose daughter married a man who lived in Mosgiel (about 30 minutes drive away). 

I gave Terry Arthur a call and explained my situation. He was retired and was more than happy to drive to the property and have a look around. He jumped the fence and took some photos for me. It was encouraging to see that they were remarkably similar to the land agent photos (always a plus when buying a property site-unseen). One of the comments Terry made to me was that he thought one of the five ponds may be spring fed. I wondered if his assessment could be correct.

I always planned to return to Taieri Beach at the end of summer to check the water levels in the ponds. When I got there in March 2023, three ponds were empty after a dry summer, but two still had water that was supporting plant-life. Surely this was not just stagnant run-off water, collected from earlier rains?

Water samples from each pond were collected for testing by an analytical lab. I was hoping the tests might show elevated levels of dissolved salts that would indicate that the water source was subterranean. Unfortunately the results weren’t conclusive, so I suppose the next step will be to do some adjacent drilling and see what happens. I’ll need to investigate this further.